DPL Campaign Questions 004
Do you have any thoughts about how to resolve release issues with less hurt and negative impact to the project all around?
I sure do. There has been a trend over many years to conflate the release management role with many other things: QA work, buildd work, ftpmaster-like work (I mean britney here), and in some cases I would even say DPL work.
If we relegate release management to a strictly managerial role, I am certain that much of the stress, tension, and burnout will be mitigated. This means putting more access into the hands of many people, which is a good thing anyway.
A release manager's job should be to say when a release is ready, what should and should not be in that release, and potentially some coordination with other developers, who are almost their equals.
There will still be social conflict when the spirit of teamwork and cooperation is overcome by other factors, but I can conceive of a point where even that would not happen.
What do you think of this and would you be ready to withdraw a delegation for a delegate that behaved badly towards another DD (even outside of his delegated role), that has been warned once by you and that did it again later on?
Do you think we can draft a code of conduct for Debian and do you think you can ensure that it would be respected by delegates?
I do not think that any long-term delegations should exist. I think that if they do, we have a structural problem which should be addressed in another way. Therefore I do not think it should be a big deal to withdraw a delegation for any legitimate reason, and if we are trying to force people to behave better (by a definition I agree with), then it seems reasonable to withdraw a delegation for bad behavior. Of course I would include ignoring people and having secret meetings in Vancouver as bad behavior, so that is perhaps not what you are getting at.
I am not particularly in love with any formal codes of conduct, but I do think it is reasonable to hold DPL delegates or anyone who holds privileged positions of power to a much higher standard of behavior than the standard DD. With power should come responsibility, and all that.
Presumably I would not delegate anyone who would place self and ego ahead of the well-being of the project, and presumably if there were a formal code of conduct or set of guidelines for delegates, those principles would align.